TAUBER, ILSE (1918-?)

"Fantegere" (c.1965)
oil on board
45 x 61cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Turramurra
 
Tauber is a forgotten, pioneering Jewish Austrian-Australian Abstract Expressionist & Holocaust survivor. Born in Vienna, Ilsa Feldmahr studied Design at the Academy of Arts and Crafts, a Bauhaus-type of curriculum, where she also learned poster work, lithography and heraldry as well as painting. Other alumni of the school included Gustav Klimt, Kolomon Moser, Oskar Kokoschka, Vivienne Westwood & Karl Lagerfeld. As a young Jewish girl, she fled Austria at the beginning of World War II, and relocated alone to London in 1940. Then eventually she emigrated to Australia, where she later married Leopold Tauber, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who also escaped Europe and arrived in Australia during the War. In Sydney she studied with Godfrey Miller and became one of his few friends. She admired him and his work tremendously. In Vienna in 1962 she was invited to take part in an exhibition of the works of Viennese artists living overseas and amongst those represented was Oskar Kokoschka. Following a trip to Japan, she found herself most interested in old Japanese art, and the influence it apparently had on Matisse and through him the modern "flat" painters. She regularly exhibited in Sydney and was a regular finalist in the Wynne Prize, Sulman Prize, Mosman Art Prize & Portia Geach Prize. She was represented by the influential Watters Gallery. She also held one-woman shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles.